News & Awards

Micro, Nano, and Molecular Systems Award 23-06-2015 Congratulations to Tian Qiu, Andrew Mark, Debora Schamel, and Alejandro Posada whose video entry won the “Microrobotics Design Challenge” at the Hamlyn Symposium in London. (June, 2015).

Micro, Nano, and Molecular Systems News 20-06-2015 Congratulations Alex Solovev, who just left the group as a Humboldt postdoctoral fellow, has been appointed a Professor at Fudan University under the 1000’s talents program. (June, 2015) Alexander Solovev

Empirical Inference News 18-06-2015 Machine Learning for climate research Jakob Zscheischler receives Otto Hahn Medal for his PhD thesis "A global analysis of extreme events and consequences for the terrestrial carbon cycle". Jakob Zscheischler

Empirical Inference Award 18-06-2015 Jakob Zscheischler: Otto-Hahn-Medal for his PhD Thesis "A global analysis of extreme events and consequences for the terrestrial carbon cycle", written at the MPI for Intelligent Systems, Tübingen and the MPI for Biogeochemistry, Jena.

Perceiving Systems Award 15-06-2015 Michael J. Black: elected foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, class for engineering sciences.

Physical Intelligence Award 15-06-2015 Wenqi Hu and Wendong Wang received the Humboldt postdoctoral fellowship.

Perceiving Systems News 15-06-2015 Michael J. Black elected as foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Three new members elected to the Academy Michael Black

Award 10-06-2015 Michael Hirscher: Hydrogen & Energy Award

Micro, Nano, and Molecular Systems News 08-06-2015 Fabian is interviewed by SWR 2 and the lab appears on Indonesian TV Fabian Adams starts his project in the group and talks about the potential of miniaturized, minimally invasive medical procedures: Fabian Adams

Physical Intelligence News 01-06-2015 Feature Robotics Medical spectrum.ieee.org Engineers explore ways to take robotics to the limits of size and function. In the 1966 film Fantastic Voyage, scientists at a U.S. laboratory shrink a submarine called Proteus and its human crew to microscopic size and then inject the vessel into an ailing scientist. Metin Sitti

Micro, Nano, and Molecular Systems News 27-05-2015 Featured "Hot Paper" Our paper "Dynamic Inclusion Complexes of Metal Nanoparticles Inside Nanocups" is the frontispiece for Ang. Chem. Int. Ed. 54, 6730-6734 (2015). Mariana Alarcon-Correa Tung Chun Lee Peer Fischer

Micro, Nano, and Molecular Systems News 13-05-2015 Dr. Andrew G. Mark awarded with Günter Petzow Prize 2015 Young scientist honoured for outstanding research in the field of material science Andrew G. Mark will be awarded this year’s Günter Petzow Prize from the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems. He will be honoured for his significant contribution to the development of a new nanofabrication technique for manufacturing, precisely and efficiently, hybrid multifunctional nanostructures with diverse 3D shapes. Andrew Mark

Micro, Nano, and Molecular Systems News 12-05-2015 Congratulations Eisenberger scholarship Dr. med. Fabian Adams is awarded a Ferdinand-Eisenberger fellowship. The scholarships frees Dr. Adams from his clinical duties (University Clinic, Univ. of Freiburg) so that he can devote the next 12 months to research here at the Micro Nano and Molecular Systems lab. Fabian Adams

Micro, Nano, and Molecular Systems News 10-05-2015 Congratulations Dr Jerome Roche leaves the group to start as an Assistant Professor at the University of Toulouse (May, 2015). Jerome Roche

Empirical Inference Award 06-05-2015 Katharina Muelling: Award for Extraordinary Scientific Achievement for her Ph.D. thesis by the "Freunde der TU Darmstadt".

News 28-04-2015 Laying of the cornerstone in Tübingen Vision of „Robotics Valley“ in the Neckar-Region The Max-Planck-Society constructs a new building for the Tübingen location of the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems. On 27. April 2015 the laying of the cornerstone for that ambitious project took place on the Max Planck Campus Tübingen. From 2017 onwards the new building will provide more than 250 workplaces for scientists and staff. The future-oriented research on intelligent systems will then be performed by scientists in four scientific departments. Bernhard Schölkopf Michael Black Stefan Schaal

Empirical Inference News 16-04-2015 Precise Imprecision Probabilistic Numerical Methods assign Uncertainty to Deterministic Computations With a new approach, Scientists of the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems aim to make numerical algorithms more efficient. During the next five years, this research project will be supported by the Emmy-Noether-Programme of the German Research Foundation (DFG) with nearly a million Euros. The applicant Dr. Philipp Hennig prevailed in a competitive process. With the start of two new PhD students in April this Emmy Noether Group takes up its research activities. Philipp Hennig

Award 09-04-2015 Samuel Sánchez: Princess of Girona Foundation Scientific Research Award 2015

Physical Intelligence News 12-03-2015 Einmal um die Welt für die Robotik Der Ingenieur Metin Sitti ist herumgekommen: Istanbul, Tokio, Berkeley, Pittsburgh – und nun Stuttgart: am Max-Planck-Institut für Intelligente Systeme baut er gerade ein Labor auf und lobt die Chancen für seine Forschung mit kleinen Robotern. Metin Sitti

Award 12-03-2015 Eric Jan Mittemeijer: Adolf-Martens-Medaille

Physical Intelligence News 15-02-2015 Nanoroboter bekämpfen Krebs profil.at Our lab alumnus Assist. Prof. Bahareh Behkam at Virginia Tech in USA received the National Science Foundation CAREER award from the Biomedical Engineering program in 2015. Her award will focus on investigating immune cell-bacteria interactions in the cancer tumor microenvironment. Metin Sitti

Award 10-02-2015 Umut Sanli: SPIE Best Student Paper Award

Perceiving Systems Autonomous Vision News 10-02-2015 Outstanding Doctorate Thesis within the KIT Research Field "Systems and Processes" Andreas Geiger has been awarded the KIT Doctoral Award In his PhD thesis, Andreas Geiger has developed algorithms for 3D scene perception in autonomous vehicles which can help to improve traffic safety, reduce traffic jams and enable car rides for elderly or visually impaired people. His approach combines visual recognition using stereo cameras with probabilistic models which are able to determine the location and orientation of roads, lanes and other traffic participants. Andreas Geiger

Micro, Nano, and Molecular Systems Award 05-02-2015 Andrew Mark receives the 2015 Günter Petzow prize for his contribution to the development of nanoGLAD and its applications (e.g. Nature Materials 12, 802).

Physical Intelligence News 04-02-2015 Our lab's work journals.sagepub.com Our lab's work: "Six-Degrees-of-Freedom Remote Actuation of Magnetic Microrobots" has been nominated for the best paper award at the Robotics Science and Systems 2014 conference. Metin Sitti Joshua Giltinan Guo Zhan Lum Zhou Ye

Physical Intelligence Award 02-02-2015 Alumnus award: Our lab alumnus Assist. Prof. Bahareh Behkam at Virginia Tech in USA received the National Science Foundation CAREER award from the Biomedical Engineering program in 2015. Her award will focus on investigating immune cell-bacteria interactions in the cancer tumor microenvironment.

Award 20-01-2015 Laura Na Liu: ERC Starting Grant (2015-2020) for Research on Nanoplasmonics

Autonomous Motion Smart Nanoplasmonics Movement Generation and Control News 20-01-2015 Scientists at the MPI for Intelligent Systems receive more than 3 Million Euro ERC Starting Grants Intelligent Systems Research: Spanning the Length Scale Stuttgart / Tübingen. Five years of basic research is secured: The physicist Dr. Laura Na Liu and the computer scientist Dr. Ludovic Righetti, both from the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, receive an ERC Starting Grant of 1,5 Million Euro, respectively. Prof. Jan Peters, head of the robot learning group at the institute (while mainly active as full professor at the TU Darmstadt) will invest part of his ERC starting grant into his research group at the institute. The researchers have won against 3.273 applicants - only 10 per cent of the submitted project appraisals receive the requested award, granted by the European Research Council (ERC). Ludovic Righetti Jan Peters Laura Na Liu

Empirical Inference Award 01-01-2015 Jan Peters : ERC Starting Grant (2015-2020) for Research on Movements of Humanoid Robotics (Project: SKILLS4ROBOTS)

Perceiving Systems Autonomous Vision Award 01-01-2015 Andreas Geiger: KIT Doctoral Award for his PhD thesis

Award 01-01-2015 Dorothea Brüggemann: Emmy-Noether-Program "Smart biomaterials from protein-based composite nanofibres"

Autonomous Motion Movement Generation and Control Award 01-01-2015 Ludovic Righetti received an ERC Starting Grant (2015-2020) for his project CONT-ACT: Control of contact interactions for robots acting in the world.

Empirical Inference Award 01-01-2015 Oliver Kroemer : Runner Up, 2015 Georges Giralt Award (Best European Robotics Ph.D. Thesis Award)

Empirical Inference Award 01-01-2015 Philipp Hennig: Emmy-Noether-Program "Probabilistic Numerics - Probabilistic Programming for Autonomous Systems"

Autonomous Motion News 18-12-2014 Robot on board The robot "Athena" carries new impulses for robotics research in its luggage Travelling from Los Angeles to Frankfurt onboard of Lufthansa flight LH 457, the passenger arrived on December 16, at 11.05 a.m. with no signs of jet lag: this was no ordinary holidaymaker, after all, but the first humanoid robot to take up a seat on a commercial flight. And despite causing quite a stir when boarding the plane in Los Angeles, Athena, dressed in a T-shirt and fetching red shoes, received no special treatment: like most of us, she flew economy class. During the nine-hour flight, the robotic creation was accompanied by scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems. Athena made her way from Los Angeles to Tübingen in order to acquire many new skills: standing, balancing, walking - and various other meaningful activities, which she can use to assist people in daily life. Jeannette Bohg Alexander Herzog Stefan Schaal

Perceiving Systems News 08-12-2014 Tiny motions bring digital doubles to life Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems unveil new technology for motion and shape capture The new technology (MoSh) will help animators jump the “Uncanny Valley” by turning a few moving dots into detailed body shapes that jiggle and deform like real humans. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Tübingen, presented their Motion and Shape Capture (MoSh) study, which appeared in the journal ACM Transactions on Graphics, at SIGGRAPH Asia in Shenzhen on December 6, 2014. Devised by a team of researchers under the direction of Michael J. Black, Director of the Perceiving Systems department, MoSh is a method that allows animators to record the three-dimensional (3D) motion and shape of a real human and digitally “retarget” it to a new body shape. With MoSh, realistic virtual humans can populate games, the Internet, and virtual reality, while reducing animation costs for the special effects industry. Michael Black

Micro, Nano, and Molecular Systems News 05-12-2014 Our work in the news, on TV, radio, etc. Our work on realizing a microscallop and nanopropellers that can move through biological tissue is in the news. Our group appears on TV, radio, in newspapers, and on multiple news sites. (December 2014). Tian Qiu Tung Chun Lee Andrew Mark Peer Fischer

Probabilistic Numerics News 01-12-2014 NIPS Oral for Michael Schober PhD student will present his work on probabilistic solvers for differential equations Michael Schober' paper on probabilistic solvers for ordinary differential equations has been selected for a full oral presentation at the flagship conference of machine learning. Michael Schober Philipp Hennig

Perceiving Systems Autonomous Vision News 28-11-2014 Andreas Geiger´s PhD thesis is awarded prize by KIT mobility center KIT-Zentrum für Mobilitätssysteme zeichnet Doktorarbeit von Andreas Geiger aus Für ein autonomes Fahrzeug bedeutet eine innerstädtische Kreuzung mit mehreren Verkehrsteilnehmern eine große Herausforderung. Wie komplexe Verkehrssituationen mithilfe von Videosequenzen besser verstanden werden können, hat Dr. Andreas Geiger in seiner Doktorarbeit gezeigt. Dafür hat er am 27. November 2014 vom KIT-Zentrum für Mobilitätssysteme den Ernst-Schoemperlen-Preis verliehen bekommen. Andreas Geiger

Empirical Inference News 27-11-2014 2014 Milner Award Lecture - Statistical and causal approaches to machine learning In machine learning, we use data to automatically find dependences in the world, with the goal of predicting future observations. Most machine learning methods build on statistics, but one can also try to go beyond this, assaying causal structures underlying statistical dependences. The hope is that this also allows prediction in certain situations where systems change, for instance by interventions. Bernhard Schölkopf

Perceiving Systems Autonomous Vision Award 27-11-2014 Andreas Geiger: Ernst-Schoemperlen-Prize for his PhD thesis, awarded by the KIT Center for Mobility Systems

News 27-11-2014 Successful through innovation Research group leader Samuel Sánchez elected as “Innovator of the year 2014” Tiny self-propelled motors which speed through the water and clean up pollutions along the way or small robots which can swim effortlessly through blood to one day transport medication to a certain part of the body – this sounds like taken from a science fiction movie script. However, Samuel Sánchez is already hard at work in his lab at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart to make these visions come true. For his innovative research, the 34 years old chemist has now been named as Spain’s top innovators under 35 by the Spanish edition of the journal MIT Technology Review. Sámuel Sánchez

Award 22-11-2014 Samuel Sánchez: Span. Innovationspreis 2014 des MIT Technology Review

Micro, Nano, and Molecular Systems News 07-11-2014 Tiny vehicles for medical applications Micro- and nano-swimmers can be propelled through media similar to bodily fluids Micro- or even nano-robots could someday perform medical tasks in the human body. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart have now taken a first step towards this goal. They have succeeded in constructing swimming bodies that simultaneously meet two requirements: they are small enough to be used in bodily fluids or even individual cells, and they are able to navigate through complex biological fluids. Peer Fischer Tian Qiu Andrew Mark Debora Schamel John Gibbs

News 13-10-2014 Günter Petzow nominated as honorary chairman of the DGM Former director gets awarded through German Society for Materials Science Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Dr.-Ing. e. h. mult. Günter Petzow, former director of the Max Planck Institute for Metals Resarch in Stuttgart (now Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems) has been nominated as honorary chairman of the German Society for Materials Science (DGM). In the society's 95 year long history, Petzow is only the second person to receive this title.

Autonomous Motion Intelligent Control Systems Award 09-10-2014 Sebastian Trimpe: Klaus Tschira Award 2014 for Science Communication in the field of Computer Science

Autonomous Motion News 09-10-2014 Intelligent Communication: Only if there is something to say Klaus Tschira Award 2014 for Science Communication in the field of Computer Science Tübingen / Heidelberg, October 9, 2014. Science in clear words: Dr. Sebastian Trimpe, a research scientist in the “Autonomous Motion Department" (Stefan Schaal) at the Tübingen Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, has written a short, comprehensible text (in German) that describes the research he conducted during his PhD at ETH Zurich. As winner in the category of computer science, he is one of six awardees who received the Klaus Tschira Award for achievements in public understanding of science on Thursday, October 9, 2014 in Heidelberg. Sebastian Trimpe

Physical Intelligence Award 15-09-2014 Taewon Seo and Metin Sitti received the IEEE/ASME Best Mechatronics Paper Award due to the paper on tank-like modular climbing robots using elastomeric dry adhesives.

Empirical Inference News 01-09-2014 Teaching Awards for Moritz Grosse-Wentrup and Daniel Braun Winter and Summer Term 2013 / 14 at Graduate School of Neural Information Processing / University of Tübingen The senior master students present this years teaching awards to Dr. Moritz Grosse-Wentrup (group leader Brain-Computer-Interface group) and Dr. Daniel Braun (group leader Sensorimotor Learning & Decision Making group). Congratulations! Moritz Grosse-Wentrup

Physical Intelligence Award 06-08-2014 Uyiosa Abosomwan and Metin Sitti received the Best Poster Award in the Adhesion Conference due to the research poster on contact self-cleaning mechanics of gecko-inspired adhesives.

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